3 


The  Law  of  Liberjy 


PRESIDENT 
HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING 


AtnpKlat  Collection 

IMi  PirmfiitT  Librm 


THE  LAW  OF  LIBERTY 


A  Baccalaureate  Sermon  delivered  at 
Oberlin  College,  June  21,  1914 


PRESIDENT 

HENRY   CHURCHILL  KING 

D.D..LL.D. 


Press  of  The  News  Printing  Co. 
Oberlin,  Ohio 


The  Law  of  Liberty 


"Faith  working  through  love." 
"For  ye,  brethren,  were  called  for 
freedom ;  only  use  not  freedom  for 
an  occasion  to  the  flesh,  but  through 
love  be  servants  one  to  another." — 
Gal.  5:6  and  13. 

I  The  Fundamental  Nature  of  the 
Problem. 

It  would  seem  a  profanation  to 
take  this  last  hour  of  college  counsel 
for  a  trivial  theme.  Only  the  great- 
est themes  befit  this  time.  I  bring 
you,  therefore,  today,  a  fundamental 
problem,  a  perennial  problem,  a  prob- 
lem that  has  occupied  men  since  they 
began  to  ponder  spiritual  issues ;  a 
problem  with  which  great  thinkers  in 
philosophy  and  morals  and  religion 
have  been  engaged;  a  problem  that 
still  has  to  do  with  the  very  essence 
of  life  for  every  earnest  man ;  and  a 
problem  peculiarly  demanding  to  be 
rethought,  just  now — the  problem  of 
liberty  and  law. 


My  theme — The  Law  of  Liberty — 
states  a  paradox ;  but  it  is  a  paradox 
that  men  have  always  to  solve.  How 
can  I  have  liberty  without  license? 
How  can  I  enthrone  the  law  of 
righteousness  in  my  life  without  le- 
galism? How  can  I  accept  the  re- 
demption of  religion,  of  divine  grace, 
and  still  keep  a  character  genuinely 
my  own?  These  are  questions  both 
profound   and    intensely    practical. 

How  difficult  men  have  found  the 
solution  of  this  problem,  the  whole 
spiritual  history  of  the  race  bears 
witness.  It  is  the  problem  of  prophet 
and  priest  in  Judaism ;  the  problem  of 
faith  and  works  and  antinomianism  in 
the  New  Testament ;  the  problem  of 
justification  by  faith  in  the  Reforma- 
tion ;  the  problem  of  the  Ethics  of 
Kant,  with  its  insistence  on  self- 
legislation  ;  the  problem  of  Nietsche — 
to  name  no  other ;  the  problem  of 
"free  lovers"  of  all  kinds  and  [times; 
and,  in  one  form,  the  problem  of  de- 
mocracy itself — the  problem  of  self- 
government.  It  is  the  great  life  prob- 
lem that  Christ  believed  himself  to 
have  solved. 

We  may  well  tak»  our  start  from 

—4r— 


the  New  Testament;  for  all  the  ele- 
ments of  the  problem  are  there  il- 
lustrated : — Judaistic  legalism  and 
antinomianism ;  the  beginnings  of  me- 
diaeval asceticism  and  mysticism ;  the 
anxieties  of  those  who  have  seen  the 
doctrines  of  the  free  grace  of  God 
and  of  salvation  by  faith  abused ; 
the  other  anxieties  of  those  who  see 
Christianity  becoming  only  another 
legalism ;  and ,  soaring  above  all,  the 
expression  of  the  abounding  life  of 
free  children  of  the  Heavenly  Fa- 
ther. 

No  fewer  than  five  books  of  the 
New  Testament  are  directly  and  pri- 
marily occupied  with  this  theme :  Ga- 
latians  and  Romans,  whose  watchword 
is  "For  freedom  did  Christ  set  us 
free:  stand  fast  therefore,  and  be  not 
entangled  again  in  a  yoke  of  bond- 
age" ;  James,  which  sounds  the  warn- 
ing, "Faith,  if  it  have  not  works,  is 
dead  in  itself" ;  and  Second  Peter  and 
the  curious  little  book  of  Jude,  that 
are  warning  against  a  licentious  an- 
tinomianism. Indeed,  the  phrase  of  my 
theme  is  caught  up  out  of  one  of  these 
controversial  books,  James,  and  my 
text  out  of  another,  Galatians. 
—5— 


The  authors  of  James,  Second  Pe- 
ter and  Jude  have  seen  the  great 
doctrines  of  justification  by  faith,  of 
salvation  by  grace,  of  the  free  for- 
giveness of  God,  and  of  Christian  lib- 
erty, made  an  excuse  for  licentious 
absence  of  character,  and  are  calling 
men  back  to  the  insistent  ethical  test 
in  religion:  "Be  ye  doers  of  the  word, 
and  not  hearers  only,  deluding  your 
own  selves." 

Paul  in  Galatians  and  Romans  has 
seen  all  freedom  and  joy,  not  only, 
but  all  inner  righteousenss,  and  all 
grace  and  beauty  of  character,  so 
sapped  by  a  hard  and  haughty  legal- 
ism, that  he  glories  in  the  deliverance 
that  Christ  has  brought  from  legal 
bondage;  and  his  great  words  are  in- 
evitably, faith,  and  love,  and  grace, 
and  forgiveness,  and  liberty.  These 
w^ere  ideas  too  great  for  his  gener- 
ation rightly  to  grasp,  and  their  abuse 
produced  a  reaction  to  a  new  legalism 
that  tainted  Christianity  for  dreary 
years.  But  to  Paul  it  was  inconceiv- 
able that  faith,  and  love,  and  grace, 
and  forgiveness  and  liberty,  should 
mean  license.  The  trust  and  the  love 
called  out  by   the  martchless   gracious 


personal  revelation  of  God  in  Christ 
stirred  new  powers  in  him,  and  held 
him  to  a  grateful  and  quenchless  am- 
bition for  such  a  life  as  Christ's,  and 
brought  him  victory  where  before  he 
had  failed.  The  free  grace  and  for- 
giveness of  a  holy  God,  such  as 
Christ's  life  portrayed,  could  but 
mean  that  God  was  pledged  to  co- 
operate with  him  in  the  attainment  of 
a  life  worthy  of  a  child  of  God.  Like 
Christ,  he  himself  found  his  highest 
liberty  in  devotion  to  his  Father's 
will.  No  man,  he  was  sure,  could 
really  be  drawn  to  Christ  and  not  be- 
come like  him — not  by  painful  legal 
performances,  but  by  the  healthful 
contagion  of   Christ's  own  spirit. 

Paul  had  caught,  thus,  a  new  vision 
of  God's  purpose  concerning  men.  He 
had  come  to  see  that  men  were  not 
made  to  be  petty  egoists,  shut  up 
within  the  narrow  walls  of  their  own 
separate  selves,  but  that  they  were 
created  on  so  large  a  plan  that  they 
could  not  come  to  their  best  independ- 
ently either  of  one  another  or  of  God, 
— that  they  were  made  in  every  fiber 
of  their  beings  for  such  fellowships. 
To  hold  back  from  these  fellowships 
—7— 


was  to  insure  defeat.  It  was  an  ut- 
terly false  and  mistaken  pride,  there- 
fore, that  in  one's  struggle  for  char- 
acter shut  the  door  on  other  lives, 
human  and  divine,  which  were  really 
part  and  parcel  of  one's  self. 

II.  Why,  now,  does  this  problem  of 
liberty  and  law,  so  clearly  resolved 
in  the  New  Testament  still,  so  con- 
stantly recur? 

Let  us  stop  a  moment  to  make  plain 
how  absolutely  essential  both  free- 
dom and  character,  both  law  and  lib- 
erty are,  and  how  vital  to  all  satis- 
fying life  is  the  inner  meaning  of 
both  contentions. 

What,  in  the  first  place,  is  law  at 
bottom — all  law  that  ultimately  a 
man  ought  to  obey?  It  is  intended, 
evidently,  to  secure  a  society  united 
in  the  pursuit  of  certain  great  com- 
mon goods ;  it  is  a  way  of  life: — a  way 
that  the  experience  of  the  race  in- 
dicates that  it  is  desirable  for  the 
common  good  of  all  that  all  men  fol- 
low; a  way  so  good  that  it  is  felt 
to  be  embodied  in  our  natures  as  the 
will  of  our  Creator  for  us,  and  there- 
fore a  way  of  life. 

When    human    law,  or    custom    be- 

—8— 


comes  something  else,  when  it  serves 
no  common  good;  when  it  will  not 
bear  the  test  of  racial  experience ; 
when  we  cannot  believe  it  represents 
a  true  ought,  or  a  true  interpretation 
of  the  will  of  God,  it  thereby  loses 
all  authority  as  law,  and  the  ethical 
law  in  the  true  sense  abrogates  the 
law  falsely  so  called.  Not  all  revolt 
against  existing  law,  therefore,  is 
lawlessness.  Many  a  smug  but  dire  in- 
justice is  hidden  under  law.  The 
insistent  and  eternal  demand  for  char- 
acter is  the  demand  for  obedience  to 
a  law  that  can  be  conceived  to  be  the 
will  of  an  all-loving  God.  Now  to 
try  to  get  away  from  that  law  is  to 
flee  from  life,  for  it  is  an  attempt 
to  get  away  from  one's  own  highest 
ideal.  That  is  not  to  come  into 
larger  life,  but  to  take  ultimately  all 
self-respect  and  dignity  and  worth 
out  of  living.  The  demand  for  lib- 
erty too  frequently  forgets  that  some 
sphere  of  order  and  law  is  essential 
to  give  freedom  itself  any  value,  and 
so  it  turns  its  revolt  against  a  law 
into  a  revolt  against  law  itself ;  its 
revolt  against  a  particular  form  of 
order,  into  a  revolt  against  all  order. 
—0— 


There  is  a  widespread  menacing  ten- 
dency in  all  spheres  of  our  modern 
life — the  tendency  to  forget  that  self- 
control  is  a  prime  condition  of  every- 
thing worth  while  in  life.  "Letting 
oneself  go"  is  a  good  road  to  noth- 
ing except  insanity.  There  is  nmcli 
talk  of  so-called  "personal  liberty,'' 
that  really  means  liberty  to  debauch 
the  community,  liberty  to  make  con- 
ditions far  harder  for  both  personal 
and   social  progress. 

But  the  very  fact  that  conceptions 
of  law  can  so  change ;  that  imperfect, 
developing  men  can  at  one  stage  find 
the  preservation  of  a  common  good  in 
a  law  that  later  seems  to  them  a 
hindrance  to  growth  and  to  larger 
life,  itself  illustrates  and  justifies 
the  perennial  demand  for  liberty. 
Conditions  change.  Men  develop.  New 
ideals  arise.  Readjustment  is  imper- 
ative. What  adjustment,  is  always 
the  question. 

All  men  agree  that  in  seeking  to 
attain  a  common  good  there  must  be 
no  unnecessary  interference  with  the 
freedom  of  the  individual.  Institu- 
tions, the  state,  the  law  itself,  all  ul- 
timately   exist   for    the   greater   good 


of  individual  citizens.  Too  heavy  a 
price  in  individual  freedom  may  eas- 
ily be  paid  for  a  well  recognized  com- 
mon good. 

But  the  justification  of  the  demand 
for  liberty  lies  much  deeper  than  this. 
The  one  thing  that  the  individual  has 
to  give  to  the  common  good  is  him- 
self, his  fully  realized  possibilities. 
But  this  complete  self-realization  is 
also  his  own  individual  highest  good. 
From  both  points  of  view,  therefore, 
there  is  required  the  freedom  for  the 
individual  to  develop  his  largest  pos- 
sibilities, and  this  requires  some- 
thing more  than  selfish  self-will.  And 
law — the  expressed  will  of  the  whole 
community — must  often  come  in,  not 
to  hinder,  but  to  preserve  this  free- 
dom of  the  individual,  his  full  initia- 
tive— to  protect  the  individual  against 
the  unwarranted  aggressions  of  oth- 
ers. The  community  suffers  wherever 
any  individual  citizen  has  not  the 
liberty  to  make  his  full  contribution 
to  the  common  life.  From  this  angle 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  law 
itself  exists  to  insure  the  highest 
and  largest  liberty  to  the  individual. 

But  the  demand  for  liberty  has  a 
—11— 


still  deeper  source.  A  man  is  not 
truly  ia  man  unless  he  has  an  inner 
life  of  his  own;  freedom  of  thought, 
freedom  of  investigation,  freedom  to 
be  himself  in  his  inmost  life.  Char- 
acter cannot  be  laid  upon  him  from 
without.  He  must  see  for  himself  and 
choose  for  himself.  A  fundamentally 
good  society,  therefore,  is  not  a  so- 
ciety in  which  every  wrong  act  is  for- 
bidden by  law  and  prevented  by  an 
omniscient  and  omnipotent  police  force, 
but  a  society  in  which  men  choose 
for  themselves  obedience  to  the  high- 
est ideals  they  have  seen.  But  this 
requires  liberty  at  every  step,  <as  well 
as  the  developing  power  of  law.  The 
great  aim  of  human  life  and  society 
is  to  develop  free  men  who  choose 
the  right,  not  to  get  a  certain  sort 
of  external  conduct.  God,  himself, 
counts  this  free  choice  of  the  right  so 
infinite  in  value  as.  to  be  worth  the 
terrible  price  of  all  the  sin  and  suf- 
fering which  the  abuse  of  men's  free- 
dom has  brought  into  the  world.  He 
has  given  men  no  play  freedom,  but 
a  freedom  terribly  real.  And  human 
society  in  all  its  lawmaking  may 
—12— 


never  forget  the  eternal  need  of  free- 
dom. 

In  the  solution  of  this  constant  par- 
adox of  liberty  and  law,  men  must 
therefore  learn  patience  with  men ;  pa- 
tience with  the  blunderers  of  the 
race;  patience  with  its  born  legisla- 
tors; patience  with  its  born  rebels; 
patience  with  its  common  men  fight- 
ing their  way  slowly  to  character ; 
patience  with  its  geniuses  and  proph- 
ets, with  their  new  and  sudden  vis- 
ions; for  both  law  and  liberty  must 
be  kept,  both  character  and  freedom. 

The  constant  recurrence  of  the 
problem  of  liberty  and  law  will  be  un- 
derstood also  when  we  see  that  this 
problem  is  at  bottom  the  problem  of 
the  radical  and  the  conservative,  and 
the  problem  of  "absolute  natural 
right,"  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  "his- 
toric legitimate  right,"  on  the  other ; 
the  problem  of  justice  to  the  past  and 
of  justice  to  the  present  and  future. 
And  all  are  represented  at  any  time 
in  society  by  the  members  of  three 
generations.  But  just  as  a  sphere 
of  law  is  necessary  to  give  meaning 
to  freedom,  and  just  as  the  preserva- 
tion of  freedom  of  initiative  must  be 
—13— 


the  very  aim  of  law;  so  the  radical 
and  conservative  at  bottom  have  sim- 
ilar goals.  The  radical  does  not  wish 
to  root  up  all  the  past,  but  only  the 
evil  and  the  ineffective  for  good  as 
he  conceives  it;  but  he  recognizes 
that  in  thus  rooting  up  the  faulty  he 
is  certain  to  sacrifice  much  else.  The 
conservative  does  not  wish  to  pre- 
serve all  the  past,  but  only  all  the 
good  of  the  past;  but  he  recognizes 
that  in  preserving  all  of  the  good  he 
is  certain  to  keep,  in  the  structure  of 
society,  much  evil  also.  Each  be- 
lieves he  preserves  a  balance  of  good 
by  his  method;  and  this  balance  of 
good  is  the  real  aim  in  both  cases. 

Like  the  differences  between  the  ad- 
vocates of  law  and  liberty,  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  radical  and  the 
conservative  are  to  a  large  extent 
temperamental.  They  go  back  finally 
probably  to  the  fundamental  paradox 
of  the  inner  life — docility  and  initia- 
tive, self-surrender  and  self-assertion. 
Character  in  the  large  sense,  as  I 
have  elsewhere  said,  "requires  both 
self-assertion  and  self-surrender,  both 
individuality  and  deference,  both  the 
assertion  of  a  law  for  oneself  and  the 
_14_ 


reasonable  yielding  to  others,  both 
loyalty  to  conviction  and  open-raind- 
edness,  both  free  independence  and 
obedience.'' 

And  for  all  social  progress,  in  like 
manner,  both  temperaments  represent 
indispensable  human  needs.  For  any 
solid  and  enduring  social  progress 
there  must  be  historical  continuity, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  constant  read- 
justment on  the  other.  We  do  not 
live  in  a  static  world ;  we  are  not 
static  beings.  We  are  always  in  pro- 
cess. A  blind  conservatism  and  a  blind 
radicalism  are  both  therefore  impossi- 
ble. To  keep  even  the  good  of  the 
past  in  new  conditions  requires  ad- 
justment. To  get  rid  of  even  the 
most  certain  evils  of  the  past  requires 
that  the  new  method  or  custom  shall 
be  fitted  into  what  men  have  already 
attained.  Free  spontaneity  in  obedi- 
ence to  constantly  bettering  ideals, — 
this  must  be  the  goal  of  both  rad- 
ical and  conservative ;  of  defenders 
both  of  liberty  and  of  law. 

III.  Let  us  ask,  then,  once  again, 
— How  did  the  New  Testament  writ- 
ers conceive  the  solution  of  this 
problem?     Have   we   modern    men   of 


the  twentieth  century  any  better  so- 
lution? All  five  of  those  New  Testa- 
ment books,  which  are  occupied  with 
the  problem  of  law  and  liberty,  seek 
to  show  how  one  may  attain  charac- 
ter and  avoid  legalism ;  how  he  may 
keep  freedom  of  life  and  be  true  to 
the  highest  standards.  They  aim  to 
point  the  way  to  definite  growth  in 
character,  as  necessarily  involved  in 
the  very  idea  of  the  Christian  life. 
Can  we  penetrate  their  solution? 

Both  theme  and  text  suggest  the 
lines  on  which  this  paradox  of  the 
moral  and  religious  life  may  be 
solved.  The  passage  in  James  that 
contains  my  theme  runs,  you  will  re- 
member, in  this  fashion :  "But  be  ye 
doers  of  the  word,  and  not  hearers 
only,  deluding  your  own  selves.  For 
if  anyone  is  a  hearer  of  the  word 
and  not  a  doer,  he  is  like  unto  a  man 
beholding  his  natural  face  in  a  mir- 
ror: for  he  beholdeth  himself,  and  go- 
eth  away,  and  straightway  forgetteth 
what  manner  of  man  Ihe  was.  But 
he  that  looketh  into  the  perfect  law, 
the  law  of  liberty,  and  so  continueth, 
being  not  a  hearer  that  forgetteth  but 
a  doer  that  worketh,  this  man  shall 
— 10 


be  blessed  in  his  doing"  (James 
1:22-25).  Here,  plainly,  there  has 
come  to  the  writer  an  illuminating  in- 
sight into  the  meaning  of  any  true 
law  of  God.  It  is  a  law  of  a  man's 
own  being,  a  revealing  to  him  of  the 
lines  along  which  life  lies.  The  per- 
fect law  is  a  law  of  liberty,  because 
it  is  the  law  of  one's  own  being  truly 
discerned  and  stated.  In  obeying  this 
inner  law  of  his  own  nature  one  has 
liberty,  the  only  true  liberty,  and  is 
"blessed"  thereby.  Such  a  law  simp- 
ly states  the  true  self  which  we  are 
to  realize.  We  can  have  freedom 
only  in  developing  toward  the  goal 
involved  in  our  inmost  natures.  Here 
is  freedom  to  follow  the  most  funda- 
mental trends  of  our  natures,  and 
here,  too,  is  the  character  that  grows 
out  of  fulfilled  ideals.  The  concep- 
tion is  identical  with  the  new  con- 
ception which  modern  science  suggests 
of  the  laws  of  nature,  as  not  hin- 
drances to  life  but  as  ways  to  con- 
quest and  larger  life. 

James  here  starts  from  the  side  of 
law,  but  Paul,  starting  from  the  side 
of   the  inner   freedom,    reaches   essen- 
tially  the   same   conclusion.      "For   in 
—17— 


Christ  Jesus,"  he  says,  "neither  cir- 
cumcision availeth  anything,  nor  un- 
circumcision ;  but  faith  working 
through  love."  "For  ye,  brethren, 
were  called  for  freedom ;  only  use  not 
your  freedom  for  an  occasion  to  the 
flesh,  but  through  love  be  servants 
one  to  another.  For  the  whole  law  is 
fulfilled  in  one  word,  even  in  this : 
thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self." Paul,  too,  shows  that  he  has 
•had  a  flash  of  illumination  lighting 
up  the  whole  paradox  of  law  and  lib- 
erty to  its  depths.  No  external  law, 
he  insists,  can  set  free  the  inner  man. 
But  the  great  revelation  of  God  in 
Christ  can  call  out  supreme  trust  and 
love,  can  appeal  at  once  to  the  inmost 
in  man.  Only  a  great  trust  can  thus 
profoundly  call  us  out,  we  getting 
such  a  vision  of  the  fatherly  will  of 
God  in  Christ  that  we  can  but  trust 
Kim,  and  God  so  trusting  us  that  we 
cannot  be  unworthy  of  that  trust. 
Such  a  trust  or  faith  is  bound  to 
"work" ;  it  will  out;  it  cannot  help 
expressing  itself  in  a  reflection  of  the 
great  personality  that  has  aroused  it 
to  such  trust  and  love; — "faith  work- 
ing through  love,"  inevitably  express- 
—18— 


ing  its  love  to  God  in  a  sharing  in 
His  life  of  self-giving  love  for  men. 
Such  a  love  has  the  very  essence  of 
all  true  law  in  itself.  It  fulfills  all 
law.  Such  a  faith,  just  because  it 
springs  from  within  and  works 
through  love,  will  be  free  and  spon- 
taneous, all  its  outer  conduct  prompt- 
ed by  an  inner  spirit.  Liberty  here 
insures   law. 

How  surely  this  must  follow  on 
any  true  conception  of  Christianity; 
how  surely  the  grace  of  God  in 
Christ  carries  one  on  to  a  life  like 
God's  own ;  how  surely  the  freedom 
of  religion  insures  an  ethical  life, 
can  be  very  briefly  put  from  various 
angles. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Christian  is 
a  learner  of  Christ,  and  hence  of 
course  makes  the  ideal  of  Christ's 
life  that  of  his  own. 

Or,  the  religious  man  seeks  above 
all,  in  the  very  passion  of  his  relig- 
ious desire,  to  share  in  the  life  of 
God  Himself,  and  the  God  whom 
Christ  reveals  is  in  His  very  essence 
self-giving  love.  One  cannot  share 
that  life  and  not  give  himself  in  lov- 
ing service  to  men. 

—19— 


Naturally,  therefore,  and  again,  the 
New  Testament  came  to  conceive  of 
a  truly  ethical  life  as  the  inevitable 
fruit  of  the  religious  acceptance  of 
Christ.  Or,  as  James  puts  it,  the  in- 
ner spirit  is  conceived  as  a  fountain 
out  of  which  all  external  expression 
comes. 

Or,  through  a  deeper  conception  of 
law,  as  we  have  seen,  God's  law  is 
felt  to  be  only  a  loving  hint  of  the 
line  of  life  for  us ;  the  ethical  com- 
mand itself,  therefore,  becoming  a  rev- 
elation of  the  love  of  God,  so  that 
we  see  that  in  obeying  the  ethical 
command  we  are  simply  following  the 
laws  of  life  into  a  steadily  enlarging 
life. 

IV.  This  conception  is  so  true  to 
Christ's  own  thought  of  the  will  of 
God  as  a  Father's  will,  as  well  as  to 
that  of  James  and  Paul,  and  to  that 
of  the  scientific  conception  of  law, 
that  we  shall  do  well  to  try  to  think 
it  through  a  little  furtber,  and  see 
its  relation  to  other  theories  of  life. 

A  large  part  of  the  appeal  of  self- 
ish pleasure,  for  example,  lies  in  its 
seeming  promise  of  larger  liberty,  of 
further  life.  "I  want  to  do  as  I 
—20— 


like" ;  "I  want  to  see  life,"  the  pleas- 
ure-seeker urges.  "Live  while  you 
live,"  he  exhorts.  And  even  the  low- 
est selfish  sense  pleasures  do  afford 
some  emotional  experiences,  that  give 
temporarily  a  new  sense  of  freedom 
and  elation  and  interest,  and  so  some 
seeming  immediate  extension  of  life. 
Now  men  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
life  freedom  and  interest  and  enlarge- 
ment. And  this  natural  cry  of  the 
pleasure-seeker  shows  that  contend- 
ers for  the  ideal  may  not  lightly  sur- 
render Christ's  idea  of  religion  as 
giving  abundant  life,  but  must  stead- 
ily insist  on  a  conception  of  good- 
ness that  can  be  permanently  inter- 
esting. One  cannot  hope  to  succeed 
in  constantly  whipping  his  soul  back 
from  all  that  he  counts  of  interest 
and  of  real  value.  Men  need  at  this 
point  constant  enlightenment.  No 
virtue  is  safe  that  is  not  both  intel- 
ligent  and  militant. 

And  the  clear-sighted  man  has  now 
come  to  see  that  to  think  of  moral 
laws  as  hindrances  to  liberty  and  life 
is  a  great  mistake.  He  now  con- 
ceives them  rather  as  formulating  the 
outcome  of  the  experience  of  the 
—21— 


race.  They  state,  that  is,  the  ways 
in  which  we  can  best  satisfy  the 
whole  man,  the  ways  in  which  we 
get  the  most  out  of  these  natures  of 
ours,  the  ways  in  which  our  beings 
were  meant  to  act.  To  refuse  to 
obey  such  laws  written  in  our  consti- 
tutions is  as  absurd  as  it  would  be 
to  refuse  to  obey  the  directions  of 
the  manufacturer  for  the  running  of 
a  superb  automobile.  The  directions 
are  not  to  hamper  us,  but  to  enable 
us  to  get  the  utmost  out  of  our  ma- 
chine. Only  a  fool  would  ignore  them 
and  pride  himself  meanwhile  on  his 
liberty.  In  fact,  one  gets  no  real  lib- 
erty in  the  use  of  a  machine,  until  its 
laws  have  become  like  inner  laws  for 
him,  and  it  is  second  nature  and  au- 
tomatic for  him  to  obey  them.  It  is 
exactly  so  concerning  the  laws  of  our 
bodies  and  minds.  If  we  ignore  the 
fact  that  we  are  made  for  action,  for 
heroic  achievement,  for  fine  personal 
relations,  we  shall  thereby  gain 
neither  freedom  nor  larger  life,  but 
make,  rather,  the  largest  life  impos- 
sible to  us.  When  men  so  act,  they 
are  turning  back  to  lower  and  cor- 
rupt ends,  to  ends  abandoned  in  the 
upreaching  of  the  race. 
—22— 


Indeed,  religion  itself  is  probably 
rightly  conceived  as  growing  out  of 
men's  constantly  extending  claim  on 
life,  men's  persistent  refusal  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  finite.  "Nothing," 
says  Johanna  Ambrosius,  "is  so  in- 
satiable as  the  human  heart.  If  it 
has  enough  to  eat  and  drink,  it  longs 
for  costly  vessels  for  the  food  to  be 
served  in,  and  once  it  possesses  these 
it  would  ask  for  the  blue  heavens  as 
a  tablecloth."  Men  have  unquencha- 
ble thirsts  for  extending  experience, 
for  permanent  outlooks  and  hopes ; 
for  constantly  enlarging  life,  in  a 
word,  for  love ; — thirsts  that  God 
alone  can  satisfy.  The  highest  law 
and  the  largest  liberty  here  again  come 
together.  The  constant  seeming  an- 
tinomy between  pleasure  and  duty,  be- 
tween the  religious  and  the  irreligious 
life,  and  the  frequent  feeling  that 
duty  and  religion  limit  rather  than 
enlarge  life,  are,  consequently,  usu- 
ally due  to  false  conceptions  both  of 
happiness  and  of  religion. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  pleasure- 
seeker  is  usually  thinking  of  an  im- 
mediate and  partial  and  selfish  satis- 
faction; forgetting  the  "long  run," 
—23— 


forgetting  the  whole  personality,  and 
forgetting  all  others.  And  the  fleet- 
ing, unsatisfying  nature  of  much 
that  is  called  pleasure,  and  sought  as 
such,  is  so  explained.  "Man  shall 
not  live  by  bread  alone."  In  the  first 
place,  he  is  a  creature  of  memory  and 
anticipation ;  he  cannot  live  simply  in 
the  immediate  pleasure  of  the  pass- 
ing moment.  In  the  second  place,  he 
is  a  creature  not  of  appetites  only, 
but  of  imagination,  and  reason  and 
conscience;  he  has  his  whole  nature 
always  to  reckon  with.  In  the  third 
place,  his  life  is  knit  up  indissolubly 
with  other  lives ;  they  are  part  and 
parcel  of  himself.  He  is  so  made.  He 
cannot,  therefore,  think  simply  of 
himself  and  have  largeness  of  life. 
In  all  these  ways  a  false  conception 
of  happiness  misleads.  The  decep- 
tive nature  of  alcohol,  as  shown  un- 
der the  cold  analysis  of  scientific  ex- 
periment, precisely  illustrates  the  mis- 
leading nature  of  the  appeal  of  the 
immediate  and  partial  and  selfish 
pleasure. 

On    the    other    hand,    the    claim    of 
the  moral  and  religious  life  may  also 
be   misconceived.      Sometimes,   with   a 
—24^- 


false  asceticism,  it  is  made  to  deny 
the  body's  legitimate  place.  Some- 
times its  goodness  is  conceived  only 
negatively  and  legalistically,  and  so 
robbed  of  interest  and  spontaneity,  as 
a  mere  emptying  of  life,  or  a  hard, 
disagreeable  and  useless  task  arbitra- 
rily imposed.  But  such  a  conception 
has  nothing  to  do  with  Christ's 
thought  of  a  steadily  advancing,  in- 
telligent and  unselfish  entrance  into 
the  loving  will  of  God  for  all  men. 
That  carries  with  it  all  great  causes, 
all  high  ideals,  all  inspiring  devo- 
tions and  enthusiasms,  and  alone 
holds  the  promise  of  a  permanently 
satisfying   life. 

V.  How  urgently  our  own  time  is 
demanding  that  we  rethink  this 
whole  problem  of  liberty  and  law, 
violently    opposed    tendencies    show. 

On  the  one  hand  there  is  the 
host  of  reformers  who  are  seeking  to 
write  into  law  all  kinds  of  imag- 
inable human  gains,  forgetting  too 
often  the  imperative  necessity,  if  civ- 
ilization is  really  to  advance,  that 
men  be  brought  to  an  inner  choice  of 
all  real  goods.  For  it  is  well  to  remem- 
ber, as  President  Hadley  puts  it,  that 
—25— 


"it  is  easier  to  pass  a  radical  meas- 
ure that  is  going  to  be  evaded  than 
to  secure  obedience  to  a  conservative 
one."  All  of  us  need  to  take  deeply 
to  heart  that  advanced  legislation  is 
in  itself  no  proof  of  progress,  if  there 
do  not  accompany  it  willingness  to 
obey  the  law  that  expresses  the  higher 
ideal.  We  are  not  to  forget  that  de- 
mocracy is  no  mere  matter  of  form  of 
government  or  kinds  of  legislation ; 
but  that  democracy  goes  forward  in 
just  the  proportion  in  which  self- 
'  discipline  accompanies  it,  as  Dr.  Jacks 
so  incisively  reminds  us : 

"The  central  problem  of  de- 
mocracy is  the  problem  of  edu- 
cating the  citizen.  This,  indeed, 
is  a  commonplace;  but  there  is 
reason  to  think  that  the  kind  of 
education  required  by  the  citizen, 
whether  as  subject  or  legislator, 
to  qualify  him  for  the  new  part 
he  has  to  play,  has  not  been  suf- 
ficiently considered.  What  he 
needs  is  not  merely  instruction  in 
political  science.  He  does  need 
that;  but  he  needs  something 
else  far  more;  something  without 
which  all  the  political  science  in 
the  world  will  carry  him  but  a 
little  way.  He  must  learn  to 
obey:  and  the  lesson  will  be  all 
—26— 


the  more  difficult  for  him  to  learn 
because  hitherto  democracy  has 
been  too  closely  associated  with 
the  spirit  which  prompts  him  to 
seek  escape  from  authority.  Of 
all  modern  democratic  govern- 
ments, with  scarcely  one  excep- 
tion, it  may  be  said  that  they 
were  conceived  in  disobedience 
and  born  in  rebellion.  Their 
watchword  has  ever  been  'lib- 
erty' ;  but  'liberty'  interpreted  in 
a  sense  which  has  obscured  its 
sterner  implications.  But  now 
that  democracy  has  taken  up  the 
task  of  social  reform  those  stern- 
er implications  are  coming  into 
view.  None  but  a  thoroughly 
disciplined  community  can  ef- 
fectually deal,  through  its  Gov- 
ernment, with  social  reform.  The 
idea,  too  prevalent  in  certain 
quarters,  that  the  restraints  of 
social  reform  will  fall  exclusively 
on  the  rich,  the  idle,  the  privi- 
leged, is  a  fond  illusion.  Every 
man  of  us  will  be  put  under  re- 
straints such  as  we  have  never 
dreamed  of;  such  as  few  men 
have  ever  asked  themselves  wheth- 
er they  were  willing,  or  even 
able  to  bear.  It  is  well  that  we 
should  all  realize  this  truth — for 
it  is  irrefutable — as  we  listen  to 
the  daring  programmes  and  the 
glowing  promises  of  political  ora- 
tors." 

—27— 


We  must  learn  to  obey.  We  must 
gird  ourselves  for  that  increasing  self- 
discipline,  that  is  demanded  by  ad- 
vancing social  aims. 

As  opposed  to  these  who  are  seek- 
ing to  write  all  reform  into  law,  and 
are  satisfied  therewith,  stand  the  vio- 
lent emancipators  of  various  classes, 
like  the  syndicalists  and  the  militant 
suffragettes,  who  imagine  that  force 
of  itself  can  bring  emancipation  to 
their  respective  classes.  Let  it  be 
perfectly  clear  here  that  there  is 
much  of  injustice  to  protest  against. 
It  cannot  be  justly  claimed  that  wo- 
men have  a  fair  representation  in  or- 
ganized society  today.  It  cannot  be 
justly  claimed  that  industrial  work- 
ers in  general  are  fairly  sharing  in 
the  joint  product  of  labor  and  capi- 
tal. The  shameless  record  of  the 
mining  corporations  of  Colorado,  in 
the  debauching  of  all  the  forces  of 
law  and  justice,  is  but  one  piece  of 
evidence.  How  certainly  the  selfish 
lawlessness  of  the  capitalistic  class 
fruits  either  in  the  selfish  lawless- 
ness of  other  classes,  or  in  the  de- 
termination to  bring  all  business  un- 
der   state    control,    is    witnessed    by 

-as- 


the  conservative  Railway  Age-Gazette: 
"The  real  leaders  of  Socialism  in  this 
country  are  such  men  as  Charles  S. 
Mellen,  B.  F.  Yoakum,  and  the  direc- 
tors of  the  New  Haven,  Frisco  and 
other  roads  who  are  too  crooked,  cow- 
ardly, indolent  or  incapable  to  per- 
form the  duties  of  their  positions." 
Nevertheless,  selfish  force  cannot  bring 
the  emancipation  of  any  class.  Not 
even  if  they  could  be  certainly  suc- 
cessful in  the  use  of  force,  could  the 
emancipation  so  come.  We  are  learn- 
ing that  the  unspeakable  folly  of  war 
is  that  it  settles  nothing;  that  after 
all  the  fighting  is  over,  the  real  so- 
lution must  be  reached  in  other  more 
rational  ways.  Let  the  Balkans  bear 
witness :  intolerable  slaughter  and  sui- 
cide of  nations,  and  absolutely  noth- 
ing of  value  accomplished!  Any 
cause  is  safe  in  just  the  degree  in  • 
which  it  has  really  won  the  conviction 
of  men.  The  real  victory  of  a  cause, 
therefore,  absolutely  requires  educa- 
tion, persuasion,  and  the  free  choos- 
ing of  the  new  goal.  The  forced  vic- 
tory, even  if  possible,  thus,  is  a  cheap 
and  insecure  victory ;  the  more  fun- 
damental and  difficult  task  still  re- 
—29— 


mains.  A  selfish,  lawless  class  vic- 
tory, that  willingly  ignores  all  other 
human  interests,  just  because  it  is 
selfish  and  lawless,  cannot  abide. 
"Nothing  is  settled  until  it  is  settled 
right,"  is  still  good  doctrine,  and  more 
clear  now  than  ever.  These  causes 
of  the  syndicalist  and  of  the  militant 
suffragette  complain,  not  without  jus- 
tification, as  we  have  seen,  that  so- 
ciety is  not  doing  them  justice.  But 
will  treacherous  use  of  force  remedy 
that?  Can  men  counsel  and  practice 
treachery  and  violence  and  spread 
this  disease  through  society,  and  reap 
the  fruit  of  loyalty  and  fair  dealing, 
and  not  rather  make  society  itself 
impossible?  Syndicalism  is  seeking 
to  remedy  the  selfish  lawlessness  of 
the  capitalistic  class  by  a  like  self- 
ish lawlessness  on  the  part  of  the 
working  class.  It  is  the  old  fallacy 
of  lynch  law.  Outrage  of  humanity 
cannot  be  cured  by  further  outrage. 
Militant  suffragism  Is  seeking  to  win 
long  delayed  justice  in  giving  women 
a  fair  share  in  government,  by  a  self- 
ish lawlessness  that  would  set  all  gov- 
ernment at  naught.  It  has  not  ob- 
served even  the  decencies  of  civilized 


warfare.  It  is  using  mob  violence  and 
it  is  increasingly  provoking  mob  vio- 
lence. Democracy,  we  may  not  for- 
get, means  not  only  se//-government 
but  self-government.  Those  who  are 
to  share  in  that  may  not  appeal  to 
the  mob.  Nothing  is  so  terrible  in  hu- 
man society  as  fundamental  lawless- 
ness, and  it  was,  therefore,  that  Kant, 
who  was  no  believer  in  character  laid 
on  from  without,  still  felt  compelled 
to  say :  "If  law  ceases,  all  worth  of 
human  life  on  earth  ceases  too."  Set 
your  face  like  a  flint  against  selfish 
lawlessness   for  any  cause. 

And  it  is  in  this  same  direction  that 
we  are  to  look  for  the  fallacy  of  "free 
lovers"  of  all  sorts,  who  find  in  the 
strength  of  uncontrolled  passion  its 
own  excuse  for  being.  Their  doc- 
trine is  having,  just  now,  a  strange 
recrudescence,  and  they  would  fain 
persuade  men  that  the  race  has,  so 
far,  learned  nothing  concerning  the 
relations  of  the  sexes.  That  there 
are  many  difficult  questions  here ; 
that  our  conventions  have  not  all  been 
justified;  that  there  have  been  some 
strong  moral  grounds  for  the  exten- 
sion of  divorce;  that  much  that  has 
—31— 


been  written  of  a  revolutionary  char- 
acter has  been  written  in  moral  earn- 
estness;  that  some  relations  classed 
legitimate  are  really  less  justified,  in 
the  sight  of  God,  than  some  counted 
illegitimate — all  this  need  not  be 
questioned. 

But,  on  the  one  hand,  where  a  real 
ideal  has  been  seriously  set  up,  as  by 
Mrs.  Key,  for  example,  it  is  an  ideal 
much  more  tenuous  and  more  difficult 
of  realization  both  by  the  individual 
and  by  society,  and  hence  less  prac- 
ticable, and  it  is  fraught  with  many 
dubious  consequences  that  make  the 
ideal  itself  exceedingly  doubtful.  It 
is  very  difficult  to  believe  that  such 
theories  do  justice  either  to  the  so- 
ber lessons  of  evolution,  or  to  the 
experience  of  the  race  in  marriage. 
When  one  prominent  Feminist  can 
say, — "Personally  I  am  inclined  to  be- 
lieve that  the  ultimate  aim  of  Fem- 
inism with  regard  to  marriage .  is  the 
practical  suppression  of  marriage  and 
the  institution  of  free  alliance," — 
one  cannot  help  feeling  that  there  is 
here  disclosed  a  bland  indifference 
both  to  experience  and  to  one  whole 
side  of  the  paradox  of  liberty  and 
—32— 


law.  The  race  will  wisely  go  slow  in 
giving  to  wild  speculation  so  great 
weight  in  the  most  important  moral 
questions.  Marriage  will  fail,  just  as 
any  other  institution  will  fail,  when 
men  bring  to  it,  only  selfish  passion. 
That  is  a  failure,  in  truth,  however, 
not  of  an   institution,  but  of  men. 

But  for  the  most  part,  these  free 
lovers  are  not  truly  concerned  with 
great  moral  ideals  at  all.  They  are 
thinking  of  selfish  pleasure,  and  chafe 
under  any  permanent  obligations. 
They  simply  are  not  willing  to  pay 
their  part  of  the  price  of  a  decent 
civilization.  And  they  are  pointing 
to  the  old,  easy,  often  traveled  road 
of  selfish  indulgence,  allowing  to  im- 
pulse supreme  control,  whatever  this 
may  cost  someone  else.  It  would  be 
pathetic,  if  it  were  not  so  shameful 
and  so  self-contradictory,  to  see  how 
these  lauders  of  passion  persuade 
themselves  with  each  new  relation 
that  here  is  a  real  affinity,  here  one 
may  find  ideals  realized,  here  vow 
eternal  fealty,  such  as  they  have  just 
belied  in  utter  treachery  in  another 
relation.  The  very  fact  that  they 
cannot  get  away  from  such  idealizing 
—33— 


shows  how  surely  any  love,  that  is  to 
be  at  all  satisfying  even  to  a  selfish 
soul,  must  be  thought  of  as  having 
abiding  loyalty.  And  so  long  as 
cause  and  effect  exist  in  the  moral 
world,  treachery,  we  may  be  sure, 
cannot  jrield  the  fruit  of  loyalty,  and 
fine  human  relations  cannot  be  built 
up  out  of  a  series  of  infidelities.  Hate- 
ful, mean,  selfish  treachery — that  is 
what  these  free  lovers  are  trying  to 
gild.  The  truth  is,  that  such  lives 
surrender  the  helm  of  w^ill  to  feeling, 
and  give  up  in  these  relations  moral 
values  altogether.  And  this  is  finally 
to  prove  traitors  to  the  race's  task  of 
an  even  tolerable  civilization. 

The  careless  indifference,  too,  with 
which  entire  classes  of  society,  in 
their  devotion  to  the  pleasure  of 
"week  ends,"  are  willing  to  jeopard- 
ize the  whole  great  institution  of  the 
Sabbath,  is  simply  another  illustra- 
tion of  selfish  lawlessness.  One  needs 
to  be  no  ascetic  to  see  that  the  con- 
version of  our  Sundays  into  simple 
pleasure  seeking,  however  innocent  in 
itself,  is  an  immense  loss  to  all  the 
deeper  forces  that  go  to  the  making 
of  any  civilization  deserving  the 
—34— 


name.  College  men  and  women,  at 
least,  may  be  asked  to  do  thinking 
enough  not  heedlessly  to  barter  one 
of  the  great  spiritual  achievements  of 
the  race  for  a  couple  of  days  of 
house  parties  and  auto  riding  and 
golf.  Are  we  going  to  lose  all  sense 
of  proportionate  values? 

The  weekly  harvest  of  death 
through  auto  speeding,  the  like  per- 
petual sacrifice  of  life  and  limb  and 
childhood  through  preventable  acci- 
dents and  bad  industrial  conditions, 
the  reputation  of  American  tourists  in 
Europe  as  souvenir  thieves,  the  shame- 
less way  in  which  supposed  respecta- 
ble people  display  their  thefts  from 
hotels  and  other  sources,  the  frequent 
heedless  disregard  of  others'  rights 
to  property  and  to  quiet  by  so  highly 
privileged  a  class  as  college  students 
— these  are  all  alike  symptoms  of  the 
old  and  new  disease  of  selfish  lawless- 
ness. 

As  civilization  goes  forward  it  be- 
comes, like  the  evolution  of  animal 
life,  more  and  more  complex  and  del- 
icate in  its  adjustments.  The  forces 
employed,  too,  are  increasingly  pow- 
erful.    The  ability  of  the  selfish  law- 


lessness  of  a  few  to  work  widespread 
discomfort  and  disaster  is  thereby 
steadily  increased,  and  the  demand 
for  individual  self-control  in  the  same 
measure  enlarged.  How  a  whole  na- 
tion can  be  terrorized  by  the  selfish 
lawlessness  of  a  few  is  being  demon- 
strated today  in  Great  Britain.  One 
selfish  boy  and  paint  pot  can  give 
discomfort  to  a  community  for 
months  and  even  years.  A  few  stu- 
dents regardless  of  the  property 
rights  of  surrounding  communities 
may  seriously  diminish  the  privileges 
of  an  entire  student  body  and  blacken 
their    reputation. 

Selfish  self-will  in  any  realm,  let 
us  be  sure,  is  no  true  liberty ;  rather 
is  it  a  sure  road  to  cutting  short  our 
largest  liberties.  We  must  rather 
be  able  to  say  with  Goethe :  "I  learned 
that  the  unspeakable  value  of  true 
freedom  consisted  not  in  doing  what 
we  please,  or  all  that  circumstances 
allow,  but  in  the  power  of  doing  at 
once  and  without  restraint  whatever 
we  consider  right." 

VI.  And  this  true  freedom  the 
New  Testament  not  only  clearly  con- 
ceives, but  it  points  the  one  eternal 
—36— 


way  to  reach  it.  Religion  itself  re- 
mains,— what  Professor  James  called 
it, — the  one  great  unlocker  of  men's 
powers, — the  one  great  emancipator 
of  the  human  soul.  Our  absolute  hu- 
man dependence  still  bears  witness, 
how  inevitably  we  are  made  for  God, 
how  certainly  we  need  to  become 
"partakers  of  the  divine  nature,"  if 
we  are  to  fulfill  the  purpose  of  our 
creation.  As  surely  as  man  is  made 
capable  of  religion,  so  surely  is  the 
largest  life  not  possible  to  him 
until  he  opens  his  being  to  the 
tides  of  the  divine  life,  to  the  in- 
working  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  The 
New  Testament  emphasis,  therefore, 
upon  the  doctrine  of  the  Spirit, 
is  an  inevitable  emphasis.  And  the 
so-called  "new  thought"  of  our  time 
is  only  a  less  rational  putting  of  the 
sense  of  our  absolute  dependence  on 
the  Spirit  of  God.  That  the  New 
Testament  should  insist  that  we  are 
to  be  born  of  the  Spirit,  that  we  are 
to  walk  in  the  Spirit,  that  we  are  to 
have  in  us  the  witness  of  the  Spirit, 
means,  not  that  there  is  the  magical 
application  to  us  of  some  thing  or 
patent  process,  but  the  'bringing  in 
—37— 


of  a  great  new  personal  relation  that 
becomes  the  source  of  all  else  in 
life, — a  new  force,  a  new  capacity,  a 
new  hope.  And  this  new  force  of  life 
counterworks  the  forces  of  death.  In 
the  moral  as  in  the  physical  life,  the 
only  real  protection  against  disease 
and  decay  is  abounding  life.  And  in 
the  light  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Spirit,  God's  free  forgiveness  is  seen 
to  mean,  not  the  magical  setting 
aside  of  the  consequences  of  our  evil 
choosing,  but  the  counter-working  of 
those  consequences  by  a  new  tide  of 
life  with  its  own  consequences  of  fur- 
ther  life. 

It  is  only  to  put  the  same  great 
method  of  life  in  slightly  different 
form,  when  it  is  insisted,  with  Paul 
and  with  Drummond,  that  men's 
greatest  need  is  persistent  associa- 
tion with  Christ.  And  it  is  no  out- 
worn way  of  life,  which  is  so  sug- 
gested even  to  the  man  of  the  twen- 
tieth century.  For  that  simply  means 
that  acquaintance  with  God,  as  with 
any  other  person,  must  be  obtained 
through  his  greatest  and  most  sig- 
nificant self-manifestation.  It  is  be- 
cause men  have  felt  that  they  found 
—38— 


just  this  in  Christ  that  he  has  come 
to  have  for  them  such  supreme  sig- 
nificance. "That  this  is  a  real  ex- 
perience and  not  a  vision,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Drummond,  "that  this  life  is 
possible  to  men,  is  being  lived  by  men 
today,  is  simple  biographical  fact. 
From  a  thousand  witnesses  I  cannot 
forbear  to  summon  one.  The  follow- 
ing are  the  words  of  one  of  the  high- 
est intellects  this  age  has  known,  a 
man  who  Shared  the  burdens  of  his 
country  as  few  have  done,  and  who, 
not  in  the  shadows  of  old  age,  but  in 
the  high  noon  of  his  success,  gave 
this  confession  to  the  world:  'I  want 
to  speak  tonight  only  a  little,  but  that 
little  I  desire  to  speak  of  the  sacred 
name  of  Christ,  who  is  my  life,  my 
inspiration,  my  hope,  and  my  surety. 
I  cannot  help  stopping  and  looking 
back  upon  the  past.  And  I  wish,  as 
if  I  had  never  done  it  before,  to  bear 
witness,  not  only  that  it  is  by  the 
grace  of  God,  but  that  it  is  by  the 
grace  of  God  as  manifested  in  Christ 
Jesus,  that  I  am  what  I  am.  I  recog- 
nize the  sublimity  and  grandeur  of 
the  revelation  of  God  in  His  eternal 
fatherhood  as  one  that  made  the 
—30— 


heavens,  that  founded  the  earth,  and 
that  regards  all  the  tribes  of  the 
earth,  comprehending  them  in  one 
universal  mercy;  but  it  is  the  God 
that  is  manifested  in  Jesus  Christ, 
revealed  by  His  life,  made  known  by 
the  inflections  of  His  feelings,  by  His 
discourse,  and  by  His  deeds— it  is 
that  God  that  I  desire  to  confess  to- 
night, and  of  whom  I  desire  to  say, 
"By  the  love  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus 
I  am  what  I  am."  ....  In  looking 
back  upon  my  experience,  that  part  of 
my  life  which  stands  out,  and  which 
I  remember  most  vividly,  is  just  that 
part  that  has  had  some  conscious  as- 
sociation with  Christ.  All  the  rest 
is  pale,  and  thin,  and  lies  like  clouds 
on  the  horizon.  Doctrines,  systems, 
measures,  methods — what  may  be 
called  the  necessary  mechanical  and 
external  part  of  worship ;  the  part 
which  the  senses  would  recognize — 
this  seems  to  have  withered  and  fallen 
off  like  leaves  of  last  summer;  but 
that  part,  which  has  taken  hold  of 
Christ   abides.' 

"Can   anyone   hear   this   life-music," 
Professor  Drummond   adds,    "with   its 
throbbing   refrain    of    Christ,    and   re- 
—40— 


main  unmoved  by  envy  or  desire? 
Yet,  till  we  have  lived  like  this  we 
have  never  lived  at  all." 

In  such  a  vital  personal  relation  to 
God,  through  His  great  self-revelation 
in  Christ,  the  free  grace  of  religion 
becomes  the  natural  root  of  law- 
abiding  character.  For  only  so  does 
the  personal  fully  replace  the  legal ; 
only  so  does  solid  hope  come  in;  only 
so,  satisfying  freedom  and  a  perma- 
nently enlarging  life.  For  as  soon  as 
the  moral  command  is  seen  to  be  the 
loving  father's  will  for  his  children, 
so  soon  it  is  seen  to  be  in  itself  not 
only  a  promise  of  life,  but  a  way  of 
life,  and  law  and  liberty  are  forever 
reconciled. 


Members  of  the  Graduating  Classes: 

My  theme  today  has  been  rather 
forced  upon  me.  The  circumstances 
of  our  time  seemed  to  demand  it.  For 
you  are  going  out  into  a  world  of 
unusually  disturbed  standards  and 
values ;  though  it  really  holds  no 
problem  essentially  new.  You  will 
be  vehemently  urged  to  take  various 
one-sided  positions,  as  though  a  to- 
—41— 


tally  new  light  had  just  dawned  on 
the  world. 

But  in  this  fundamental  paradox 
which  we  have  been  today  consider- 
ing, you  cannot  be  true  even  to  your 
college  education,  and  be  one-sided. 
For  you  have  learned,  we  may  hope, 
the  psychological  necessity  of  both 
self-assertion  and  self-surrender.  You 
have  learned  the  scientific  lesson  of 
victory  and  liberty  through  insight 
into  law  and  obedience  to  it.  You 
have  learned  the  historic  lesson  of 
the  constant  necessity  of  both  nis- 
toric  continuity  and  readjustment. 
You  have  learned  the  esthetic  lesson 
that  even  Art,  that  seems  the  freest 
expression  of  the  human  spirit,  has 
its  inevitable  element  of  self-restraint. 

Therefore,  for  your  individual  lives, 
do  not,  on  the  one  hand,  lose  law  out 
of  your  life.  You  do  not  want  to 
make  your  life  a  chaos  but  a  cos- 
mos. On  the  other  hand,  do  not  lose 
freedom  out  of  your  life,  the  freedom 
of  children  of  God,  the  freedom  of 
self-realization,  the  freedom  of  utter 
truth  to  your  own  idividuality  and  to 
your  own  highest  vision.  Be  true. 
Be  free.     And  you  will  be  both  true 


and  free  if,  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus, 
you  do  always  and  only  what  a  gen- 
uine, all-inclusive  love  requires.  Let 
him  set  you  free. 

In  the  task  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion, too,  that  is  pressing  in  upon  your 
generation,  you  cannot  evade  the 
double  demand  of  the  law  of  liberty. 

On  the  one  hand,  social  life  can- 
not advance,  nor  even  exist,  in  a  law- 
less world.  Your  task  on  this  side 
will  be  three-fold:  to  help  to  make  it 
steadily  more  true,  first,  that  the 
laws  of  your  community  and  state 
and  nation  are  just  and  righteous 
laws,  which  do  not  count  things  more 
sacred  than  persons,  which  allow  for 
the  necessary  constant  adjustments  to 
changing  conditions,  and  which  so 
deserve  the  support  of  all  good  men ; 
second,  that  by  the  patient  and  per- 
sistent processes  of  education  and 
moral  enlightenment,  the  principles 
embodied  in  the  laws  are  enthroned 
in  the  reason  and  conscience  of  the 
community ;  and  third,  that  so  there 
may  not  fail  that  steady  self-discip- 
line and  free  self-control  and  obe- 
dience which  can  alone  make  laws  of 
any  final  avail. 

-^3— 


On  the  other  hand,  social  life  is 
not  worth  living  without  freedom. 
At  the  foundation  of  all  rational  so- 
ciety, therefore,  there  must  be  basic 
reverence  for  the  individual  personal- 
ity— respect  for  his  liberty  and  for 
the  sanctity  of  his  inner  person.  But 
the  enormities  of  unrestrained  self- 
ishness have  been  so  many ;  and  the 
frightful  effects  of  vast  inequalities  in 
material  conditions  so  plain,  that  it 
now  seems  certain  that  society  has 
before  it  a  series  of  attempts  inordi- 
nately to  regulate  the  individual, 
which  are  certain  to  provoke  in  turn 
a  reaction  to  an  equally  exaggerated 
liberty.  But  neither  extreme  should 
shut  your  eyes  to  the  fact  that  you 
cannot  make  a  life  worth  living  with- 
out freedom ;  and  that,  as  Hobhouse 
puts  it,  "the  true  opposition  is  be- 
tween the  control  that  cramps  the 
personal  life  and  the  spiritual  order, 
and  the  control  that  is  aimed  at  se- 
curing the  external  and  material  con- 
ditions of  their  free  and  unimpeded 
development" ;  and  with  clear  dis- 
crimination you  must  fight  the  first 
kind   of    control,    and    stand    for    the 

—44— 


second.     Only   so  can  the  largest  lib- 
erty   come. 

In  these  deeper  questions  of  the 
personal  and  social  life  rules  cannot 
be  given.  Principles  alone  avail.  Just 
how,  in  the  perplexing  individual  sit- 
uations which  you  are  to  confront, 
these  principles  are  to  be  applied  I 
cannot  tell  you,  and  I  would  not  if 
I  could.  For  your  own  growth  and 
enlargement  are  themselves  to  be 
found  in  the  solving  and  re-solving 
of  this  perpetual  paradox  of  hu- 
man life — the  paradox  of  liberty  and 
law.  May  God  help  you  to  be  so 
true  to  the  light,  that,  whatever  the 
external  success  of  your  lives  may 
be,  you  cannot  fail  in  the  inner  vic- 
tory. ''For  ye  were  called  for  free- 
dom ;  only  use  not  freedom  for  an 
occasion  to  the  flesh,  but  through 
love  be  servants  one  to  another." 


S27S4 


